


Not By Any Measure

by RobinLorin



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Post-Season/Series 02, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14177325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinLorin/pseuds/RobinLorin
Summary: "I am not finished. Not by any measure." - S2E7





	Not By Any Measure

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: talk of underage sex work as well as seasickness.

When she was called Anne, she didn’t have time for anything as frivolous as stargazing.

Sarazin was on her all the time, sending her the most important clients, training her up to be his most popular girl, for when Marie got too old. Marie and the other girls knew it, too. There was always someone trying to trip her up so they could crawl over her to the top spot at Sarazin’s feet.

Anne had to dodge slop buckets when she passed under windows, pick rats out of her bed, remember to look vapid at the right times and reply cleverly at other times; hide her multiple stashes of extra coin she hid from Sarazin; and of course perfect all the boring tricks that made her so predictably spontaneous and enjoyable in the sack.

Anne was clever, though, and Anne had a regular every Friday who fell asleep right after. She told everyone he had the stamina of a teenager, and while they all assumed her to be under him she’d swing up and out the window. She’d climb up to the roof and sit with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her practiced smile would fall away, slowly; and then her shoulders would droop, her chest falling lower despite her tight corset pushing her breasts up to her neck.

She had a quarter of an hour before she had to go back and tuck herself under his arm. The precious minutes were spent breathing in the cool air, clearer above the brothel than the street below. She felt removed from the world on the roof, listening in on others’ troubles, free of eyes on her.

But she was never free of the thread of fear and tension that always ran through her when she was Anne. Her minutes were also spent planning her next move, figuring a way out, shuffling tricks and appointments and cons around in her head until she could maybe, maybe, see a path that led out of this brothel. Kicking Sarazin on the way out, if she played her cards right. She never noticed the stars for more than what they were: cold, distant, uninteresting parts of the scenery, as much use to her as a tree or the horizon. Stars couldn’t feed her or free her.

* * *

 

When she was Milady de Winter, she didn’t allow herself anything as frivolous as stargazing. Stargazing was something for noble women with too much time on their hands and rich husbands who bought them ridiculous things to look at the sky with. Simpering, doll-like women who had no idea of the world outside their parlors; women who would faint if they even heard a tenth of what Milady had seen.

She had left the brothel, and kicked Sarazin on the way out - stealing his richest client for her own use tended to put an end to that kind of employ. She had changed her name. She had bought fine clothes and perfected her mimicry of the most fashionable of noble women.

Milady was a lady, but she was not one of those women. She was an imposter, a spy in their ranks, a whore wearing pearls. She was always aware of the exits; always ready to escape if - when - a lady suddenly recognized her for what she was. She had thought that she had been granted an end to her suffering; thought that the God all the hypocrites preached about might actually have granted her peace. And now she was scarred and twisted and all the more bitter for it.

She had given her true name to a man who had dirtied that name further than any of her past deeds had done; and when she climbed down from the hanging tree she had pulled on the heavy mantle of the name she had chosen for herself when she left Sarazin - left his callous pimping and thievery and murder for her own brand of each.

It struck her, like a hand against her cheek, every day - how foolish she had been, to think that she was leaving Sarazin for something greater; to think that Heaven had seen her suffering; to think that she had trusted a man, had loved a man; to think that anyone would love her. How foolish, to think she could be anything but an imposter among these women.

But more foolish those women who believed her (for now, her thumping heart always whispered; wait until they see you). More foolish they who gave her their secrets and their trust. That was a mistake Milady de Winter would not make. Not again.

Milady spent her time in salons, bathed in false lamplight; in dark alleyways, clutching a dagger, eyes on her target; in taverns and bars and places where men loved to spill secrets.

Heaven was not in the stars; Heaven was far beyond, and Milady would never see it. Hell was each betrayal and lie and secret that spilled like rubies from the tongues of Milady’s targets; Hell was each poisoned word that men and women spoke to each other, and the bars they so built around themselves. Hell was trust. Hell was the constant ache of her shoulders, tense and drawn tight against her ears to accentuate her chest. Hell was looking at the sky and wishing it was Heaven.

She did not look up at the stars.

(She lied to herself more than anyone.)

* * *

 

And now she is not Milady de Winter, and she is not Anne.

She does not know what to call herself now, as she clutches the rough wood of a ship and struggles not to heave over the side. She has never been on a boat before; how unpleasant to discover this effect now, while she still wears her fine traveling clothes. The wood under her hands is splintering and stabbing her hands through her gloves. It is one more slight pain. She will endure it, as she has endured others.

The captain approaches her and asks after her health, offers her some mildly maggot-free biscuit. She declines; a lady would never. Anne had eaten worse. Milady de Winter would have skewered the man with a glare. She - whoever she is now - waves him off.

He knows her by a false name, a pseudonym from years ago who still holds papers that ensured safe travels. She wonders what he sees when he looks at this woman in fine clothes taking a nightshift merchant’s ship across the Channel. She wonders if she will ever be able to stop analyzing herself from her audience’s perspective; wonders if she will ever feel like she is not performing, not somehow appealing to her onlookers with every breath, every shift of her skirt, every twitch of her mouth or swallow that bobs the choker about her throat.

Is this what awaits her in England? If she arrives as a noble lady, will she find another set of parlors and salons and courts and intricate niceties that have her thrumming under the expectation of perfection? If she forgoes her false nobility, will she become again what she has been most of her life - will she be a terrible creature half-formed of Anne and Milady de Winter both, churning the cold earth of the English slums under her chipped nails and wishing to die; living only in rebellion, marking out those who she might take with her to that deeper Hell?

She closes her eyes and breathes the salt air deeply: fresh and cold and unfamiliar. The nausea is subsiding.

A year or two in society, perhaps: enough to double the not-insubstantial amount of coin she has now, and then she could retreat gracefully and take out a cottage in the countryside, citing health but spreading a rumor that would separate her from society permanently. She could have her own house. She could smell the crisp night without any horse shit or vomit or come or burnt food clouding the air. She could plant a garden.

An unexpected rush of - of something - it hits her, and her eyes are suddenly tearing and she grips the wood railing tighter. Fresh splinters spring into her palms. She opens her eyes and tilts her face to the sky, blinking urgently, still - always - aware of her position of visibility on the desk of the ship. She must not cry.

The tears dry in the wind off the prow. She focuses her gaze, forcing the emotion back. The sky above the water is brilliant with stars: white pinpricks among swirls like soap bubbles, clusters of tiny stars and constellations scattered wide across the deep, faraway black of the universe. The longer she stares, the more the sky seems to retreat, as if the stars are coming closer, peering curiously at her, bending to the earth and the sea to shine upon her upturned face.

Trying to name her, perhaps.

She blinks, and the stars retreat. She turns toward the front of the ship, where England is waiting for her. She has a plan. She has the thought, the tentative curl of a green shoot, of a house and a garden.

Somewhere she can see the stars.


End file.
